Australia dithers as another heatwave strikes

Here we go again. Just after its hottest year on record, Australia is once more sweltering in a heatwave that has engulfed Victoria and South Australia. Heatwaves are becoming increasingly common, but the country's new government doesn't accept that this is down to climate change and is doing little – even though action could save lives.

Australia is trying to cut deaths from heat stress by educating the public about the risks, says Liz Hanna of the Australian National University in Canberra. But this isn't enough. "With a warming planet, no longer are these rare events," says Hanna. "So it is time that Australia got serious about heat and how we are going to manage these events."

In an as-yet-unpublished study, Hanna and her colleagues found that older suburbs in Canberra with more trees were up to 7 °C cooler than newer, less leafy suburbs. Some suburbs are planting more greenery to stay cool, but the federal government is sitting on its hands. "It's reluctant to do anything because that would mean admitting climate change is a reality," says Hanna. Without a concerted national effort, greenery will continue to decline as population density rises, she says.

In the long run, the most important thing the government can do to cut heat stress is tackle the greenhouse effect, says Hanna. "Without rapidly decarbonising our economy, a global health crisis will inevitably follow."

Out of the frying pan

2013 was Australia's hottest year on record; a record that would have been almost impossible without human-induced climate change. The new year has offered no relief.

The latest event is unusual, with both high maximum and minimum temperatures building up "excess" heat over the area that won't dissipate until Friday, says Alasdair Hainswroth from the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, Australia.

The hot air is moving slowly from the west of the country, where it reached 47 °C in Perth at the weekend. The heat has preconditioned the area for fires, which have now flared up, threatening people's homes.

Although bushfires are a risk to humans in Australia, heat itself is a bigger killer, says Jim McLennan of La Trobe University in Melbourne. Australia's worst bushfires in 2009 killed 173 people, he says, but more than twice that number died because of the associated heat wave.

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Desperate to put a damper on the fires (Image: AP/PA/Department of Fire and Emergency Services, Evan Collis)